Now, will you kindly turn with me for
a little while to the 13th verse in
the 6th chapter of that great Gospel written
by Matthew, and to the last petition in
the Lord's Prayer, words with which we are
very familiar, lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil, or deliver us from
the evil one.
It is evil with a definite article here,
and it is probably inclusive of both the
evil, the major evil, and the evil one
that lies behind all evil.
What should be our mood as we come
to another Communion season?
Well, one can turn to many passages of
Scripture for guidance, I think, on that subject,
but I have been brought back to this.
I have no doubt but that we have
here a key to the kind of attitude
that befits men and women redeemed by the
grace of God, intending to gather on a
Lord's Day around our Lord's table to partake
of the broken bread and the outpoured wine
as Jesus ordained we should do so very
long ago.
There is an attitude that is revealed here
which I believe is the kind of attitude
that He looks for in every one of
His children, and may it please Him to
enable us in some measure to produce by
His Spirit what pleases Him at this time.
Now, the more I have been browsing over
the Lord's Prayer and meditating upon it over
the last year or so, the more obvious
it has become to me that we have
here something not only of exquisite beauty, and
it is a thing of beauty, it is
the work of an artist.
There is not a spare word here.
The movement of thought is something that defies
description and the movement from one aspect of
the subject to the other.
It is a piece of logic.
But over and above everything else, of course,
it is a directive, a spiritual directive.
It is the incarnate Lord Jesus Christ telling
His followers how we should pray.
It is a piece of practical advice brought
within the compass of just a few words.
You can number the words here, they don't
come to many.
And yet within those few words you will
find an inexhaustible mine of spiritual wealth.
Well now, tonight we are coming to the
last of the six petitions.
I say six petitions, some speak of seven
petitions here.
I say six because I think that what
we have in the verse before us tonight
comprises one petition, though there are two sides
to it.
Lead us not into temptation, that's a negative,
and then there is the complementary positive, but
deliver us from evil or from the evil
one.
The one without the other is incomplete.
The two are but halves of the one
yearning which our Lord would have in our
hearts, in your heart and mine.
Do we have it?
Let's be honest for a moment before we
come to think of the text.
As the Lord looks down upon you and
upon me tonight, meeting for this preparatory service,
does He find in my heart any real
desire that I should not be led into
temptation, but that I should be delivered from
the evil one?
I don't know how you will have to
answer that, but He knows where we stand.
And let us pray that by the Word,
by meditating upon this truth and by the
ministry of the Spirit, He will enable us
not only to pray it, but in some
measure to manifest the underlying attitude that is
here exemplified.
Well now, it ought to be said, I
suppose, that there are almost as many interpretations
of certain words and phrases here as there
are commentaries of the Gospel of Matthew.
I can only try and pass on to
you what I deem to be most appropriate
in the context, and if I'm wrong, I'm
sure you will check up and you will
take only what you think is right.
Now there are three main thoughts here, it
seems to me, and we'll take them in
turn.
I'd like us to think first of all
of the fear of the forgiven.
The fear of the forgiven.
There is a fear, an anxious dread, that
often beclouds the life of the impenitent, the
unregenerate, the unbeliever.
We think of that from time to time.
There is no peace, says my God, to
the wicked.
And we often think of the dis-peace
and the dis-quietness, dis-quietude that is
often exemplified by men and women outside of
Christ who have no faith, who show no
repentance, who are without God and without hope
in the world.
That's not what I'm referring to.
There is a fear that belongs only to
the forgiven soul.
Now you don't only, you do not simply
encounter it here, you have it elsewhere.
You have it in the Old Testament.
You have it, for example, in a text
I've often wanted to preach about or preach
on, and I'll come to it one day,
God helping me, it's in Psalm 130, just
puts it in a nutshell.
There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest
be feared.
Now forgiveness deals with some of our fears,
but forgiveness, genuine forgiveness, creates other fears.
It takes away one fear, it inculcates in
the soul another kind of fear.
And that's the kind of fear that we
have in this petition of the Lord's Prayer.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil.
I don't want to sin.
It's the fear of sinning.
It's the fear of displeasing our Father.
It's the fear of dishonoring our Savior.
It's the fear of being.
But the Lord has made it possible by
his grace for us not to be the
dupes of Satan.
There is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest
be feared.
He whose debt has been cancelled, he whose
sin has been forgiven, by recourse to the
atoning and the cleansing blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ, should always be conscious of a
growing dread of any such continued involvement in
sin, as would again displease his Father, again
dishonor his Redeemer, again incur him in debt
when he has been forgiven such a vast,
vast debt already.
Our Lord envisages the emergence of such a
holiness-breeding fear in the heart of every
forgiven man and woman, that his whole being
or her whole being will sigh for deliverance
and victory.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from the evil one, or from evil.
Now let me just say one or two
things about this.
This is a fear of the emergence of
such circumstances as would again result in sin.
The word used by our Lord for temptation
has a somewhat general connotation.
Its more common meaning would be better indicated
by our English word to test, testing.
Generally, it refers to this kind of experience,
namely to the activity involved in testing something
or someone to prove its genuineness.
The motive is always good.
The motive is not evil.
It's not testing someone in order to show
him or show her up.
It's testing someone in order that that someone
can prove his or her worth.
It's testing with a noble end in view,
to prove the genuineness of the person or
the object, rather than to provoke something alien
to life in anyone.
It is to strengthen rather than to weaken.
It is to purify rather than to pollute.
Now something of that pure motive comes to
light when we remember some of the Biblical
passages in which this or a kindred term
is used.
For example, in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy,
you hear of the mother of the mother
eagle coming one day and throwing the little
family overboard out over the edge of the
nest.
And there they all go out into space.
Here's a cruel thing to do, is it
not?
Why does she do that?
Is it because she hates her young?
Not on your life.
If you keep an eye on the mother
eagle, you will find that she's swooping down
under them, even as they tumble to try
and find their wings on the way.
And her pinions are outspread so that if
they fall and fumble and tumble, they fall
on her wings.
She loves them all right.
What is she doing then?
Well, she's testing them to teach them to
fly.
She's getting them to discover the innate capacities
given them, in order that one day they
may leave the home and fend for themselves.
You have the same kind of notion again
in God's testing Abraham by giving him nothing
other than his naked word and telling him,
I am going to give you a child
by Sarah.
Now, we've been through this over recent times,
and I don't need to pause very long
with it, but you realize what a big
thing this was.
God was testing Abraham.
Can you really believe me?
Can you really trust me?
Can you really take my naked word?
Moreover, John records how our Lord asked his
disciples a question on one occasion in order
to prove or to test them as to
what they would say, particularly one of them.
When Jesus then lifted up his eyes and
saw a great company coming to him, he
said to Philip, when shall we buy bread
that these may eat?
And then this, and this he said to
prove him, same word, to test him, for
he himself knew what he would do.
See, he put the question to them in
order to see now what will you make
of a situation like this?
How will you react?
He was testing them not to show up
their sins but to bring out their faith,
to give them the opportunity of manifesting their
confidence in him.
God never tempts his people in the sense
of seducing them to sin or of arousing
their carnal desires.
That he never does.
There is a world of difference between trying
out his people's grace and arousing their corruptions,
as one of the Puritans says.
When God tests us, it is never to
make us sink into sin but rather to
make us soar above it.
Not to see us defeated but rather to
see us defeating the enemy of our souls
and the enemy of our Lord and rising
above him in the power of his grace,
of the Lord's grace.
Now that, however, is only one part of
the truth.
The same word does also denote seduction towards
evil.
And the reason for the transition of thought
from the one to the other is not
hard to discover.
You see, due to the sinfulness of our
natures and the subtleties of Satan, what is
intended to be a testing with a view
to bringing out our faith and our obedience
and our allegiance to the Lord often becomes
the occasion for arousing in us the carnalities
that lie hidden and entrenched in our beings.
That's what happened in Eden.
So that what was meant to be a
testing in the good sense becomes a temptation
as Satan interferes and especially as he appeals
to our fallen human natures.
The forgiven man will dread the thought of
being tempted or even being tested in such
a way as would lead him on the
route to sin.
And that's the thought here.
He whose past has been so dearly forgiven
will learn to become careful of the future
and so he cries, lead me not into
temptation anywhere but nowhere where I'm liable to
be tempted to do what I don't want
to do and what I know I shouldn't
do.
In all probability this is precisely the same
concern as that underlying our Lord's words when
he said to the disciples in in Gethsemane,
pray lest you enter into temptation.
It's not the fear that God will actually
entice them into sin.
That's not it.
God does not do that.
But the fear of sinning.
Wonder whether we really know anything of this
in our hearts.
The next thing I want you to notice
here is this.
This fear is also one that reflects the
sorrow and the shame that would be involved
in running into debt with one who has
already forgiven us so much, so often and
so freely.
Deliver us from the evil.
Now we shall refer to the phrase again,
the evil.
We'll take it here as having reference to
sin only.
We've already indicated that it goes beyond that.
The evil with a definite article from which
the forgiven person desires ardently to be delivered
is the shameful but dastardly act of
going against the grain of the will of
the only one who could have mercy upon
us and save us and has given his
only begotten son to be our savior.
It is of inflicting pain upon the one
who was not only the lawgiver of Sinai
but the lamb-giver of Calvary.
Now this is the capital disaster in the
mind of the maturing disciple.
He shudders at the very thought and as
he grows in grace, the fear becomes greater.
Of course it becomes part of a plethora
of other emotions too, so that it may
not always be as evident on the surface.
But if he examines it, it is there.
The fear of displeasing one's Lord.
I trust we know something of this fear
of the forgiven, of this holy dread that
makes us pray daily, lead us not into
temptation but deliver us from the evil one
or from the evil.
If we do not know this divinely kindled
fear, then we ought to pray for it
and pray for it and pray for it.
Our God expects it in us.
Secondly, I'd like us to look at the
spirit of the sincere.
There is the dread possibility facing us here
again as in in the rest of this
passage, in considering the rest of this prayer
or indeed almost at every turn in our
spiritual pilgrimage, especially in prayer, the dread of
acting hypocritically and especially in prayer the dread
of mouthing mere words rather than of praying.
Where, however, the fear of which we have
spoken is genuinely felt in any real measure
and the utterance of this plea is sincere
and honest, there should be an accompanying submissiveness
to the God whose favor we seek and
a confident obedience to his will.
And I want you to notice those two
things.
One, in the first place, the sincere expression
of this request, of this plea, should be
accompanied by a due submission to the leading
of God.
We are praying for leading.
We must submit to it.
Lead us not into temptation.
Lead us in any other way but not
that way.
The spirit of the sincere is this.
I'm praying that I should not be led
into temptation.
Therefore, I follow the leading of God in
any other way to avoid temptation.
That is hardly honest, which says with the
lips, lead us not into temptation, and then
proceeds not only to reject the means whereby
the Lord would divert us from temptation, but
to trifle and to play with those very
things that tend to bring about temptation in
our lives.
You know, we sometimes do that kind of
thing.
We ask our Lord to deliver us from
temptation.
And then we deliberately get ourselves entangled in
the kind of things that we know from
experience generally lead us to sin.
Here, of course, we encounter practical difficulties.
We do not like to yield at any
rate.
We do not like to yield unquestionably to
anyone.
And when we say this word, lead us
not into temptation, lead us not.
When we think of God's leading us in
the other way away from temptation, it means
that we are submitting, that we are yielding
to him, that we are following him.
And this is what we don't like to
do.
We like to choose our own way.
Do you notice the way this prayer has
come to this point?
Talk about, talk about psychology.
I don't know whether that word is the
right word to use here.
But at any rate, see the way our
Lord brings us there.
How did he start?
When you pray, he said, say, our Father
who art in heaven, turn your hearts and
your thoughts to God as revealed in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And see in him your own heavenly Father.
Then learn to say, hallowed be thy name.
Let your name be hallowed, sanctified, separated above
every name, given honor above every name, given
preeminence above every other.
So that your name is altogether singular.
No other name stands alongside of it.
It's alone.
It is sanctified.
It is holy.
It's alone.
In your estimation, in your affections, in every
aspect of your life, the name of the
Lord is above every other name.
Do you see the way we're going?
He's the Father.
He's the Father whose name is above every
name.
He's the King of the kingdom.
His kingdom has already come and yet it's
coming.
It's a kingdom that is coming throughout the
ages and throughout the years.
It includes yesteryear and the year before that
and right to the beginning.
He was king at the beginning and he
is the king of a kingdom that gathers
its subjects out of every kindred and tribe
and people and nation and age and clime
and so forth until the very end.
He's Lord of history.
See him, says Jesus.
Then you've learned to say, your will be
done on earth as it is being done
now in heaven.
And it's only at the end he comes
to this, lead us not.
But you see the picture that he's presented
of God.
He's presented the picture of God that we,
if we're honest, if we're sincere in what
we've said, then he's a God that we
should be able to follow without difficulty.
He's a God that we should be able
to trust without difficulty.
He's a God that we should be able
to respect without difficulty.
But our carnal natures resent yielding and obeying
wholly and utterly anyone.
This is where the cross comes right into
our experience, you see.
We have to die to self in order
to render obedience and to yield even to
the great almighty omnipotent God who gave his
son to be our savior.
But now there's a principle here.
We are only able to do that insofar
as we get to know the God he
is, know him for who he is and
what he is.
There are two things that grow together according
to this principle, I would think, and they
will generally grow together or they don't grow
at all.
One, our knowledge of God.
Two, our capacity to pray.
If you and I really know God, then
we can pray, lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
If we don't really know God well enough,
we shall never pray that, not really pray
it.
Knowledge of God and the sheer activity of
prayer are two things that move together like
the two lines of a railway track, side
by side.
They belong together where the one stops, the
other stops.
Where the knowledge of God stops, prayer stops.
I will never pray beyond my knowledge of
God, save the hypocrite's prayer.
Now, my friends, you and I have many
weak spots in our lives through which Satan
finds his way in.
His power is not unlimited, however.
It is limited power.
But, oh, how he finds a way into
our lives to cripple our prayer and to
curb our knowledge of God.
You remember the story of Achilles, the hero
of the Trojan War, the legend.
The legend is that he was submerged by
his mother in the waters of the Styx
River when he was a child.
And according to the legend, his mother dipped
him in the waters holding him by the
heel.
And every bit of him, every spot of
his body was covered in the water apart
from the spot under her hand, the heel
that she was holding.
And so, for the rest of his life,
he was immune to wounds.
If somebody shot an arrow at him, it
never penetrated his skin.
Of course, this is only a legend.
He was immune to everything.
But, at long last, Paris found a vulnerable
spot where his mother's hand had been, where
he had remained dry even though he'd been
plunged in the water of the Styx.
And Paris's arrow pierced and he was slain.
You and I have a thousand such spots
in our lives that we need to guard.
We are vulnerable in the realm of the
mind and of the imagination and of the
will and of...
Let me move to this.
Moreover, he who sincerely prays this prayer should
learn to trust the delivering hand of God,
not only to yield to his leading, but
trust him to deliver us.
The two go together, two halves again of
one truth.
He who cries for deliverance must learn to
submit to the instruction of the deliverer in
order to look confidently to him for his
deliverance.
Now, whereas in the first half of this
plea we pray to be led away from
the circumstances that might involve us in sin,
in the second half our Lord has in
mind the fact that there is an enemy
that comes after us even when we walk
the right way.
You see?
Oh, Satan, our foe, is cunning.
He will first of all try and get
us to walk into sin, walk in the
way of sin, the way of unrighteousness, where
he knows there will be temptation and plenty
of people to seduce us.
The right program on the TV and the
right people, and they'll insist on having that
just when you are there, or the right
topic of conversation, or the right principles or
absence of principles enunciated.
He knows that, and he knows how to
get us there.
Did we not have a shepherd who is
good and who is great?
That's where we would all go.
But, and this is the thing, the Bible
is so open and so blessedly relevant.
Even when you're walking the right way, Satan
comes after you on the right road.
He overtakes you on the road of righteousness.
He can catch up with you when you're
doing the right thing.
And there's no one else there to tempt
you.
There is no one to seduce you.
The heavens above are blue, and the grass
beneath is green, and the birds are singing,
and everything's beautiful, and only man is vile.
And he can catch up with you when
there's no one there, and yet tempt you
and seduce you.
Isn't this true?
Thus understood, there is a wholeness about the
prayer before us, for we know full well
from man's universal experience that we can fall
into sin in one of these two ways.
We can be taken captive by him at
his will.
He walks about like a roaring lion, seeking
whom he may devour, and you never know
where he's coming from.
But our Lord Jesus Christ taught us to
pray.
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from the evil one.
There's a way out of the jaws of
Satan into the liberty of the sons of
God, and Jesus taught us to pray to
his Father for that.
The one word about the third main point
here, the greatness of God.
Now I guess I'm repeating myself a little
here, but I can't help it.
See, the more our Lord says, or the
more we examine his words here, which are
brief as we've indicated, the more do we
realize that he's painting a picture of God
all the time.
And in his mind there is such a
massive, such a masterly, such a gigantic picture
of God in his greatness, in his goodness,
in his wisdom, in his faithfulness, in the
infinity of his mercy that we need have
no doubt at all.
Though Satan may be right at our heels,
he is able not to lead us into
temptation, but to deliver us from the evil
one.
God's greatness is clearly reflected in the adequacy
that is attributed to him by Jesus.
Now let's confine ourselves to the last two
petitions, just to remind you.
According to Jesus, God is the provider of
our daily bread.
Or a simple thought.
How often we forget it.
We see the baker's wares as coming anywhere
and everywhere other than where it really comes
from.
A hand that gives life to the grain
is an omnipotent hand.
It's the creator's hand.
Children of God, you and I need to
have that eye and that penetrating vision that
sees that and recognizes that and worships him
for that.
Jesus also spoke of him as the partner
of our daily sins.
Not only the provider of our daily bread.
This is his grand prerogative and none shall
share in it, says the writer of the
hymn.
He stands alone.
He alone has the capacity to forgive the
sins of men.
There is no other source of forgiveness.
Seek it where we may.
We shall never discover pardon elsewhere, but in
God and in God through Christ his Son.
Moreover, our God is capable of leading us
through the swamplands of temptation and of keeping
us safely in the way.
He knows each step of the homeward road.
And he knows how to choose the safe
path for every child as we move through
the bog land that has been mined by
satan.
And he can take all his children safely
home and not one of them will be
lost.
Satan, our archenemy, is no match for him
according to the estimation of Jesus.
And Jesus knew satan, remember, as well as
he knew the Father.
All we know about satan is fundamentally from
Jesus.
When we think about him ourselves, we may
be weaving webs of imagination together.
It's the easiest thing done in the Christian
life to imagine things about satan and about
angels and even about God.
The infallible things we know about satan as
about God came from the lips of the
Son of God, the only infallible revealer of
truth.
And he has given us to know about
him that he's a very mighty person.
The three Synoptic Gospels record his conflict with
the adversary at the outset of his public
ministry.
And they clearly insist that Jesus constantly detected
his sinister hand behind so much that was
saddened, sordid in the world.
Jesus referred to him as, well, listen to
some of the epithets, listen to some of
the titles, the enemy, the wicked one, the
prince of this world, the wolf that menaced
his sheep, the murderer, a liar from the
beginning.
Jesus most certainly knew the enemy's power.
He knew it in his capacity as mediator,
as well as from the vantage point of
his divine sonship.
But Jesus also knew the almighty power of
God, and he knew God the almighty as
his father.
And he told his children, you come to
my father and your father as your father.
Now that's the privilege.
You do not simply come to him as
the potentate of time, though he is that.
But you come to him as my father
and your father.
The lily grows, and it's only like a
little bit of grass.
It is here today, it's gone tomorrow.
It grows in the morning and is green
and beautiful and white as the flower.
But it'll be cast in the oven tomorrow,
or it'll be gone.
But you are children of your heavenly father.
You have a father.
They don't have a father, the lilies of
the field.
You have a father, a heavenly father.
And your father is my father.
Let us not think then that because we
are less aware than our Lord was of
Satan's power and presence, and perhaps less intimately
aware of the greatness of God, that he
is not as great as he was.
Our God is unchangeably the same.
And he is Satan's master.
And what our Lord Jesus wants us to
exhibit here, and what he wants us to
act upon, is the fact that God is
great.
And you see, this is really what happens
when we pray.
We acknowledge the greatness of God in every
respect.
The man or the woman who doesn't pray
and trust God in prayer is the man
or woman that has never seen or acted
upon the greatness of God.
You may have a marvelous creed.
Your confession of faith may stretch from one
end of the continent to the other.
But your God is not as great as
that, unless he's big enough to pray to
and to trust.
So also is God's greatness implied in the
expectancy that the Savior teaches us to have
as we draw near to him.
These words reflect his greatness in terms of
goodness as well as power.
There is something exquisitely beautiful here.
To Jesus, you see, there was no doubt
at all as to God's power or goodness.
No question about it.
It was resolved.
He knew the Father.
You know, when you know someone, let anybody
else impugn that person.
Let them say whatever they like.
There's a rumor abroad.
You can take it.
You don't get excited.
You know him or you know her.
You know.
Jesus knew.
He who is great beyond human comprehension is,
then, to come back where we began, is
our Father.
Himself knowing the inner reality of that sublime
relationship, our Lord Jesus Christ would have his
people pray for deliverance from sin without the
least doubt as to the Father's willingness to
grant it.
He is Father.
Indeed, that the petitioner should be one who
concedes honor to the Father, who has confessed
him in the terms that precede this part
in the prayer, is very wonderful.
But even if we do not properly say
and are not able out of a full
heart to say, Thy kingdom come, Thy will
be done on earth as it is in
heaven, He is still our Father if we
are in Christ.
He who is great beyond human comprehension is
also our heavenly Father.
Jesus knew that, and he tells us to
pray to the Father to deliver us from
temptation with this expectation in our hearts.
But even if we can go a step
further than we have just indicated, even if
it were not so, even if those who
pray are not always honorable in their attitude
to God, not honorable to his name, do
not respect his kingdom nor his will, there
is yet a further infallible ground for the
expectancy that Jesus inculcates in the hearts of
his people.
He tells them to pray, and he tells
them to pray to the Father in his
name.
Now, what I'm getting at, I'm trying to
put it in a nutshell.
Assuming that I cannot say honestly all that
has been said in this prayer, I cannot
repeat it from the depth of my heart
and with all my heart.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be
thy name.
I place other names far too high.
They come far too near to the Almighty
in my estimation.
Okay.
And I do not say Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.
I've not grown there yet.
I'm struggling with it.
By the grace of God, I'm moving forward,
but I'm still a child.
And I'm finding myself tempted and tried on
every hand.
And the evil one has knocked me around,
and I am bruised by him.
What then?
Oh, my dear Jesus tells me in my
immaturity and my failure, he says, look, I'm
telling you to pray to the Father.
And I'm telling you to pray to the
Father in my name.
There is no higher basis for which you
can ever appeal to the Father.
The ground of appeal before God is not
your perfect stand or stance or what you
think you have done perfectly, but my perfection
as I died on the cross and rose
again triumphantly and sprinkle my blood on the
mercy seat.
Go to him on the basis of what
I have done and what I have said
and what I promised, the basis of my
finished work.
You see, this is something we need to
grasp.
Many of us are unable to pray properly
because we always have a guilt that, well,
I'm not living up to it.
Now, we need to confess our sins in
that case, and we need to humble ourselves
in the sight of God and perhaps of
men.
But when all is said and done, the
basis of our acceptance with God is not
in the fact that we have done this
or we have done that.
The basis of our acceptance is this.
The mediator acknowledges us as his own.
And he says, you're mine.
I died for you on the cross.
I shed my blood for you.
And I tell you, go to the Father
in my name.
Ask him in my name, and he will
do it.
Now, that's authority.
And the man or woman that has authority
in prayer is the man or woman that
takes Jesus Christ at his word.
He counts, you see, before God.
He doesn't always count here upon earth in
the present tense.
The government of Canada is at the moment
unwilling to have his name inscribed in the
Constitution or even the name of God.
I don't know whether you shudder at that
or not.
I have a sense of awesomeness about it.
But in heaven, Jesus counts.
And his blood counts.
And Jesus says, go in my name.
Stand on my merits.
I'm sending you.
I'm telling you.
Pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us.